5.56 nanoreef

[five.five-six]

Yes, it's a nanoreef. In my opinion anything under a million gallons is a nanoreef.

I have been keeping fish since the late 70's. I remember taking my allowance and riding my bicycle miles each way to the fish store and back, carefully wrapping the top of the bag containing my new fish around the right handle grip for the trip to it's new home in a 10 gallon glass tank with under-gravel filter and air-pump powered lift tube.

In 1992, I had a smoking fast 80386 with math co-possessor, Duran Duran was one of my favorite bands and I had a 20 gallon hexagon reef with PC lights and a wooden air-stone powered protein skimmer and I was hooked!

I have had successes and failures but have pretty much always had a tank until the birth of our 2nd son who is now 8. Almost 2 years ago I started again with a 29 biocube progressed to a 135 peninsula which is about to be replaced with this new tank.

It's a Leemar 72" X 24" tall X 30" wide peninsula. Starfire on the long sides I picked it up used about a month ago. In order to save several inches in our foyer, where the tank will sit, I am replacing the ghost overflow with an internal coast to coast overflow.

After frantically consulting with numerous other seasoned reefers I settled on building a steel stand. It's terribly overbuilt because I am afraid of things I don't really understand and structural engineering is one of those things. A few weeks back I bought the raw materials from IMS. #11 2" X 3" tube for the top of the stand #11 2" X 2" for everything else. If I could offer any advice to anyone interested in building their own steel stand, it would be to buy your steel cut to length from a supplier that has nice 20' band-saws. having the steel cut to dead-nuts length and dead-nuts square makes setup, which is a very critical part of welding, much easier.

Even though the cuts were all made, metal prep is important. de-greasing the metal, deburing the insides and beveling the edges make a good fillet joint easier. Don't forget coffee!

Progress photo. I spent about 1 hr setting up the stand top, making sure it was exactly flat and square and true.

Stand is actually upside down in this photo. Those braces are supports for the plywood bottom which will be recessed and sealed with a 3/4" steel lip all the way around to catch minor spills before they get to my floor.

And here it is in my garage after powder coating with the AA PVC sump system just waiting for some friends to come over Friday to set the tank on top so I can start setting up the plumbing. The gussets are recessed 120/1000" to accommodate for the magnets to hold the skins on. Leveling feet are 1/2" SS with 2" plastic pads rated for 3500 pounds each.

 

[five.five-six]

Looks like tank transfer will be mid January. I would love to get it done this year but I won’t have a double fishtank in my living room ongoing transfer for Christmas or the week leading up to Christmas.

That said, I should have all the parts to setup the new tank this week and a week of leak testing and I could have it done in 2 weeks... IDK

I finaly found a place to get the one piece of glass I need and that whole prosess was a giant PITA



I think I found another piece in the puzzle as to why my SPS have been doing so poorly. Yesterday, I wanted to finish laying out the plumbing on the new tank and needed the UV sterilizer. I pulled it from the 135 and began to clean it. What I found was the the inside of the tube, all the parts that recieved direct UV light had badly corroded. There was so much black plastic mush that my hand looked like I had stuck it in ink. I wonder if that could be the source of the high levels of tin in my ICP tests?



Looks like I’m getting this light from santa. I know it’s probably a bit more power than I need but it’s dimmable to 25,50,7 5 and 100% and it’s white and goes with my setup and it’s just about the same size as the light window in my refugium. I have some 1/2” clear acrylic rod. I plann on cutting legs from the rod and gluing them to the bottom the fixture so I can set it right on the refugium.

 

[five.five-six]

I got my 21-3/4 X 28-7/8” 1/2” glass for my internal coast to coast overflow. That was a painstaking journey of about 3 weeks to find someone who wasn’t gouging me $175-$250 for it or wanting weeks to procure it. I really had no idea finding a sheet of glass could be so frustrating but finaly found outstanding service from golden glass in Fullerton. 24 hrs and it was cut and polished to perfection, even has diamond cut edges $80 out the door.

I’ll silicone the glass in tomorrow and complete the plumbing saturday and can probably start filling the tank for leak test on sunday.

 

[lanshark]

That stand is a piece of art! Did you weld it? Should hold a few VW bugs easy ...
Nice size tank. fish doing 6ft sprints will make them happy...

 

[five.five-six]

That stand is a piece of art! Did you weld it? Should hold a few VW bugs easy ...
Nice size tank. fish doing 6ft sprints will make them happy...

Yes, I have been looking at several of my friend’s AGE stands And I’m using bigger steel on a smaller tank. I did weld it. I’m much more of a grinder than a welder but my welds are plenty strong.


They are actually only getting 5’4” of swim room, I took the back 8” for an internal overflow. Design concerns. The foye where the tank is going is only so big and the current 6’ tank crowds it enough, using the external overflow would have eaten another 5” of the room. With the internal overflow, compared to the old tank and stand, this one will consume 3” less of the room. In the old tank, the return and lighting cables came up behind the tank, on this one they will both come up inside the overflow.

Here's a photo of the glass setup to silicone in for the overflow. The pencils were removed once the silicone bead was laid in place.

Here is the "snake tray" It will be secured under the stand and will serve as cable and hose management. I'm dropping it off to be powdercoated red today

I picked up 200-300 pounds of used live rock last weekend 50 cents a pound. actually paid $100 and got well over 200 pounds. My friend Steve helped me acid wash them then pressure wash them and now they are sitting in his salt water pond in his side yard until I do the tank transfer.

 

[five.five-six]

I'm such a dork. Thursday, I remembered that I had gotten distracted before I checked out from BRS with 2 little things I needed on a plumbing order I had made last Sunday. overnight shipping was $25 but I figured, I couldn't do any of the plumbing without those to things so I sucked it up and added a few things and paid for the overnight shipping. Then I tracked last Sunday's order and it will be here on Monday

I painted the wood parts of the stand and get them installed today, besides the snaketray won't be back from powder coating until next weekend. it would be best to have that for layout before I install plumbing.

Bottom is in and sealed. Idea is that it can catch small spills before they get to the floor and the idea works.

 

[five.five-six]

I think I want to put a frag rack in my skimmer section. I’d like to keep mounted frags out of the DT but that means I need a good enough light. Preferably something white becaus everything under the tank is white blue or red. I’ll post a better pic of the sump later.

I got to plumbing. Completed the return and manifold and connected the refugium to the sump. That was a real trick because I chose to use 1-1/2 to connect the fuge to the sump and the holes in the sump are only 1”.


Tank is about 2/3 full of water. No leaks!!!

 

[five.five-six]

Interesting night last night. I ended up with a M1 vectra, thank you Cody for the hookup!!! Anyway, that pump is awesome. I stayed up to 3AM messing with it and once I figured it out it made the tank overflow and return all but silent if I closed off the Durso breather hose. Just dialed the pump up to the Durso's siphon rate and it went silent.

Being to lazy to get a valve to close off the breather tube, I just stuck behind a tunze in the main DT

thrilled with my new silent setup, I shut it off and went to bed. and slept for a few hours while the 1/4" breather tube back siphoned about 4" of water out of the DT in to the sump which overflowed and filled the stand base which leaked because as it turns out, alex+ kitchen and bath turns to mush when submersed. and water got under the paint and pealed the paint off and ruined the wood.

This is why I am glad I am setting this all up in the garage.

So I started over but with EPIC materials this time including birch plywood, 100% silicone caulking and the one, the only Phil Swift flex seal.

For those of you who don't know of the awesomeness that is Flexseal and Phil Swift, just watch this short video. My kids were ecstatic to help apply the flex seal liquid, though the 8-year-old informed me that duct tape beat out flex seal in a test and that I got ripped off LOL

 

[five.five-six]

 

[five.five-six]

Fixed this mess today

First I setup a rio 2500 for a return pump and some temp heaters, I knew this was going to take a while.

Then I laid all the equipment out on the backer board and marked out where the holes needed to go.

After that I cut the holes, broke all the edges with sand paper and painted the board and upholstered the front of the board.

Next I mounted app the equipment to the front of the board.

Power supplies were velcro attached to the back of the board.

Made all the connections.

Then secured the board with screws to blocks that I had mounted inside the cabinet earlier.

There's still some touchup left but it's just about there.


Next project is to skin the stand.